I remember darling Emery’s newborn session so well! You can see her newborn photos here. She has grown up so much these last 6 months and is such an adorable little baby! Her mom brought some really sweet tutus and some fun UT props. She was so smiley and so happy!

One of my photographer friends has decided that she no longer wants to do newborn photography. So she’s referring her clients to me 🙂 This is one of her dear friends…who also happens to know some of MY dear friends. Small world. This is baby number four for her, and her mother in law was VERY excited about it. So excited, in fact, that she paid for her session…and a mini session for the whole family for a Christmas card. Isn’t that amazing? While we were talking about when to do the photo session for the family, we realized that her mother-in-law would be in town for a few days and we could photograph the family then. Unfortunately, it was REALLY cold outside that day. But we did it anyway and did it VERY quickly. Grandpa was nice enough to let the twins borrow his jacket for a little while. They thought it was pretty fun 🙂

I have a slight addiction to Pinterest. I have recently decided that it is perfect for everything except photography. During Snowmageddon of 2015, I got a wild hair and decided to try to recreate a photo I had seen of 3 sisters on Pinterest. The girls in the photo looked so peaceful and so serene. It was beautiful. Photographing my own kids is hard because I am wrangling and doing the technical stuff, too. On top of that, only one of my kids enjoys being photographed. People often tell me how amazing it is that I get such “great” shots of my kids all looking at the camera and smiling. The truth is, they are rarely all looking at the camera.

I’m going to tell you my big secret to getting great photos of your kids. Have ZERO expectations. My kids each have their own little personalities and interact differently than the girls in that pinterest photo. Why should I try to make my children look like kids they are not? I quickly realized that I was not going to get my “Pinterest recreation” and this would be just a quick practice shoot . I decided to focus on the posing. Because I was more concerned about the posing than the styling, I just pulled back their gnarled hair into a ponytail and let them keep the same clothes on that they’d been wearing for 3 days straight (we were snowed in for nearly three weeks). I decided that what I really wanted was to capture their little faces and how similar they look. Would I have liked that “perfect” Pinterest photo? Sure. Was this a “Pinterest fail?” Absolutely not. What I ended up getting was so much better. I included the “outtakes” so you can see that photos like this don’t just happen. When we let go of our Pinterest ideals, we can end up creating photos that are truly magical.

I had a lot of fun getting to know this darling family. In fact, they reminded me a lot of my own family, which made photographing them a little easier. Even better, the MOTHER used to teach Spanish. I used to teach Spanish. How neat is that?

Can you believe this awesome location is actually their backyard? It’s pretty great, isn’t it? It worked out perfectly because I could photograph the older two kids while we waited for the youngest to wake up. And then we were able to photograph just the kids together while we waited for their dad to get home.

It’s kind of hard to believe that this darling little girl is already 6 months old. It was a really cold day in October when we did this. Normally, I do 6 month photos inside, but her 9 month photos were going to be in January, so we decided to switch things up a little. I have to admit that I was a little nervous, but she was SUCH a trooper! We kept her wrapped in blankets and removed them quickly to snap our photos. Her mom wanted a photo of her to put in her yellow bathroom. As soon as I heard that, I immediately envisioned these shots and asked her if I should buy this little yellow polka dot bikini from Cream of the Prop. I was so glad she said yes! She showed so much personality and I really love these photos!